Guam Housing and Urban Renewal Authority Director Ray Topasna said he wants to sell off the authority's assets to help alleviate the island's affordable housing shortage.

"It's actually something I thought about doing 9 years ago, but I wasn't given the opportunity to move forward," he said.

Wanting to sell off the authority's properties got Topasna into hot water his first month on the job when he told KUAM News he wanted to lease or sell the Tumon Guma Trankilidat.

"For now, there's a lot of controversy," he said. "I need to talk more to our governor and to our elected officials and see what their take is. So no, that's not part of the plans right now."

Topasna said GHURA's properties are too expensive to maintain.

"We have facilities that are 40-50 years old and it's very costly to maintain," he said. "HUD doesn't give us enough money to maintain it. We have single-family dwellings, duplexes, primarily and it's very costly to maintain. We have yard work to do, we have old plumbing, galvanized pipes so, we're just looking at repositioning. That's what HUD had been telling us to do, and I'm asking the board to consider it and we'll be developing and formalizing a plan that we will present to the administrations very shortly."


Topasna said he's looking at southern GHURA units going on the market first - but he said he wants GHURA tenants staying in properties that could be sold to have the first shot at buying them.

"If we were to liquidate those assets that's 750 families that would be eligible to purchase these homes," he said. "Yes we could make a huge dent if we got the board to approve it and is it allowable under HUD's guidelines? Absolutely, we wouldn't even be talking about it if it wasn't feasible."

Topasna said he's shopped his plans to HUD in the next couple of months. He adds that if the plan goes through, GHURA will start building more "projects-style" high rise developments for low-income tenants of the agency.

"Traditionally that's how developments are built in the states, in Hawaii," he said. "On Guam it's a little different."

Topasna said he's bringing his plans to HUD in the next couple months before he brings the issue before his board again.